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SXSW Doc The City Dark Examines Vanishing Darkness

When he was growing up in rural Maine, Ian Cheney constantly found himself looking up at the starry night skies. But after relocating to New York City, those stars vanished from his view, replaced by the ever-present glow of the city. In his moving documentary, The City Dark—which had its world premiere at SXSW—the director goes on a quest for the vanishing darkness, examining the effects of light pollution on science, the environment, our bodies and our souls.

The City Dark really resonated with me, because I grew up in suburban Pennsylvania and moved to New York City. So what inspired you to make this film?

I grew up spending a lot of time in rural Maine and forged this really strong connection with the stars, in ways that I'm still processing and unraveling. It spurred my imagination, got me very interested in science and even contributed to me becoming something of an environmentalist. But like many people, I grew up and started living in a city and lost my connection with the night sky. Then, a couple of years ago, I heard this statistic that more than half of the world's population lives in cities. It seemed to me that the whole world's population is undergoing this transition not just from countryside to city, but also from darkness to light. So the film started as a personal exploration of what it means when we lose our connection with the night sky.

So you decide you want to make a documentary about this. What were your next steps? Who did you talk to first?

I started with the obvious. Astronomers care about the stars. So I started with astronomers. I visited observatories all over the country and Canada, asking astronomers whether they were threatened by light pollution, how the skies have changed over their lifetimes, what was so important about their work, and why, in their opinion, it's so important that people see the stars. And they made a lot of compelling cases about why their work was very important and fundamental to modern science and the understanding of the breadth and depth of the universe. But they also pushed me to think about light pollution in different ways. They helped me to think about the ways in which light is affecting not just our view of the stars, but changing fundamentally this earthly cycle of light and dark we've had for so many years.

So from there I started talking to biologists and cancer researchers and ecologists about how this spread of artificial light is affecting ecosystems and our energy use, and from there started talking to lighting designers about the way people are trying to reimagine the way we light our cities. Which is not something that I think most of us think much about. We take the physical infrastructure for granted. So the process of making the film has made me a little obsessive about looking at outdoor lighting, which I never thought would be something I would be interested in. But now I can't step outside anywhere without looking at lights.

One of many things that struck me about the film is that you talk about how beautiful our city lights are, but at the same time, they cause all this terrible stuff to happen to us and to the environment.

We have a complicated relationship with the light. What did I love so much about the dark in Maine? It was the little lights in the sky. It's clear that we're attracted to lights, and it's clear why we would want to light up our cities at nightbecause we're a diurnal species and we see better in the light. And there are obvious benefits to extending the day that I don't think we should do away with. There's also this aesthetic attraction to lights that complicates the story of light pollution. But we're not saying let's make the city darkit's, let's light the city better, let's make the city darker. Let's get the light we need, and just not waste it.

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There's a lot that I learned in The City Dark about how the light pollution affects animals, which surprised me. Was there anything you learned that especially surprised you?

I knew nothing about circadian rhythms. It's idiotic of meit's so fundamental, this idea that our bodies adapt to cues in the environment. And we're hardwired to best operate when we have a regular cycle of light and dark. But it was mind-blowing to me that the disruption of that cycle might cause health risks. It's probably not as acute a health risk as smoking a cigarette or exposing yourself to extreme doses of radiation, but it's certainly made me install blackout curtains and wear eyeshades and made me wonder about all those astronomers who are staying up all night, disrupting their circadian rhythms in their pursuit of the dark.

Who was your favorite person to talk to?

I really enjoyed meeting Sam Storch, who is a Brooklyn-based amateur astronomer. We don't talk about this in the film, but Sam also runs one of the last remaining school planetariums in New York City, and he clings to that planetarium as this last way of showing New York City kids what the stars look like. Just in his lifetime, he's lost the stars, and he's had to go farther and farther from the city to find them. He took us out in his convertible and showed us how he used to put the top down back in the day and look at the stars. And now when he puts the top down, he sees the orange glow of New York City. So for him, it's the memory that keeps him going. But he pointed out that many kids today won't have that memory.

You mentioned better light design in cities. What do you think better design encompasses?

I'll mention two things. One is that many lights don't need to be on all the time. And cities have already begun doing a decent job recognizing that. Many are responding to the by now increasingly well-known story of how migrating birds are affected by city lights. So during the spring and fall migration seasons, many buildings in many cities are electing to shut off their lights after 11 pm when, for the most part, the people meant to be enjoying those lights or seeing those advertisements have gone to sleep.

That isn't really making the evening night sky for the kid amateur astronomer in the Bronx any darker or more star-filled. The other project ahead of us is just not wasting so many electrons and so many photons and sending them up into outer space or into people's apartment windows. So if a new light is needed, let's replace it with one that directs light downward. In doing so, you can use a smaller light because you're not sending light up, and you can save money.

Are there challenges to doing this? I imagine funding might be one of them.

Better lighting is like a green building technology. In green building people sometimes talk about how it costs more up front, because you're either replacing something or because the technology is new or is better made. But like many technologies, it pays itself back, because these lights are saving energy. There should be some incentives put into place for people to get tax write-offs if they're not polluting the commons, not polluting the skies. They're doing a public good, and they can then be encouraged to spend that extra dollar to cut down on light pollution.

I'm not convinced it'll happen overnight, partly because there are costs involved in swapping out old lights for new lights, and everybody's strapped for cash right now, looking for ways to cut costseven though this will save money in the long run. And I think the human connection to the stars, and the risks associated with light pollution, are only starting to be on the public radar in a bigger way. Groups like the Dark Sky Association have been doing a great job of bringing this issue to light(groans) Oh, no, don't laugh. Sorry. That should be on my list of phrases to avoid this week.

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